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Open Sourcing the DNC (cont.)

Micah L. Sifry | January 13, 2005 - 2:15pm | 2 comments | Email This!

Following up on Matt Stoller's earlier post, the campaign for DNC chair continues to heat up online. BlogPac, a Democratic political action committee started by Jerome Armstrong, Markos Moulitsas and several other bloggers, had a half-hour on-the-record conference call with Howard Dean yesterday. Several participants have blogged the conversation (Annatopia, Rick Klau, Bob Brigham of Swing State Project, Jeralyn Merritt of Talkleft); in addition, if you want to listen to an MP3 of it, go to John Aravosis's blog, here.

I haven't had the chance to listen, so I can't comment on the tone of the conversation, but judging second-hand from those bloggers' various postings, it looks like they handled Dean with kid gloves (not surprising given how many of the call's participants backed Dean in the primaries). Aravosis asked what appears to be the toughest question: How are you going to make this work if there's such an entrenched class within the party establishment that you scare the hell out of them? But Dean batted it away with some aphorisms about leadership.

Maybe politicians shouldn't be so threatened by the idea of opening up their internal conversations to the blogging phenomenon, after all?

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Comments

Kid gloves

by rklau on January 13, 2005 - 2:36pm

I tend to agree, this wasn't an antagonistic call at all. And Trippi's name didn't come up, which was mildly surprising to me.

My question - the focus on the state operations, which Dean laid out as a central element of his strategy to reform the DNC - was for very personal reasons (I'm a candidate and chair of the local party), and I think represents the crux of the matter. Rosenberg is talking a lot about how much the Internet can change things, and I don't think many of us will dispute that. But I've seen first-hand what the lack of a party operation can do to local on-the-ground efforts, especially in non-battleground states when the big elections come around.

In short: it kills them. Consequently we (the local party) need to constantly "rebuild" by reaching out to newer people (those who haven't been frustrated by the lack of success in their local race, due in part to little to no attention paid from the state and/or national orgs). And we have no infrastructure - things like names, walk lists, phone lists - all stuff that the DNC has. I walked my precinct before the election, and heard from more than a dozen people: "Oh, I already gave to the DNC/DCCC/DSCC." Or, "I'm on your list, I get e-mails from the Kerry campaign all the time." One problem: I have never seen those names, seen that money, heard from those groups.

The lack of coordination hurts us in a very real way. And as much as I'd personally love to see the Internet be a focal point for any DNC efforts moving forward, I'm convinced it's *not* the single most important element of a successful DNC strategy moving forward. (Given my own biases about the role the net needs to play in politics, this is surprising even for me to read.) I want a robust state party. Getting the tech in place, IMO, is far simpler than mobilizing the troops to use the tech... and someone who has the experience to coordinate that kind of activity (and deal with the personalities, egos, etc.) is who I want as Chair.

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Rick Klau
e-mail: rick@rklau.com
weblog: http://www.rklau.com/tins/

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Rick Klau
e-mail: rick@rklau.com
weblog: http://www.rklau.com/tins/

DNC Chair: Howard Dean, Simon Rosenberg And My Concerns

by WurfWhile (trackback) (not verified) on January 13, 2005 - 11:59pm

Matt Stoller, who is supporting Simon Rosenberg for DNC Chair left a comment yesterday asking what I, "as a local candidate," am looking for in a DNC Chair. I'm going instead to do it as a Democrat - because Democratic...